There's not much I can say about Super Smash Bros Ultimate that hasn't been said more eloquently by others. It's the apex of the long-running crossover platform-fighter series; it serves as a loving tribute not just to Nintendo, but to video games as a medium. It remains my favorite game to play locally with friends and I think it really speaks to the game's strengths that I can lose 100 matches in a row and still have fun. Super Smash Bros only flaws are having inconsistent online and not making Waluigi playable. I'd love for the game to be rereleased with all the dlc and updates on a cartridge, so the finished game isn't lost to time.

Hopefully not the last entry for Smash, but if it truly was it was definitely a wild ride. The only reason the game is really low for me is lack of playing it, and I’d also be lying to myself if I said I wish we could’ve had interactions between characters to make the whole “everyone is here” thing more prevalent

But as someone who doesn’t follow Smash lore all that much, the best part about the game were the reveals for the DLC every direct and shitting myself when picks like Steve and Sora actually made. Sakurai really outdid himself with this game

the best(?) Smash game. even if it doesn't include the highs of the previous entries, Ultimate stills deserves its title if only for the amount of content it has to offer. I'm no competitive player so let's just say that playing this game casually is a freaking blast, solo or with friends.
I gotta admit I kinda fell off of it as time went on but with the amount of hours I've sunken in it, I can't say I don't like Smash Ultimate, even if the Story Mode could have been better and if some beloved modes didn't make the cut (Event Matches and Break The Targets, I'll never forget you <3)

Smash Bros is my favorite gaming series: I have been a fan of thisfranchise even before the third title of the series, SSB Brawl, was released on the Wii. Since then, I joined the online community, not just to play, but to gush about the potential of the series. Ultimate feels like the culmination of all of those years of speculations and hype regarding the release and experiences of the past titles.

Smash bros Ultimate is not just a crossover fighting game.... it's feel like the Oscars of videogames: whatever series and characters are featured in this roster is not only highlited and becomes a big center of attention, but they are also celebrated. Smash bros treats its characters and worlds with a level of attention to details that rivals and even surpasses the best crossovers that plagued the modern media.

It's the perfect presentation for a lot of amazing heroes villains and stories in the videogame pantheon to collide with each other and indulge in wacky Cartoon network matches, with and amazingly addicting gameplay and a stellar amount of respect for the history of the featured series.

Ultimate specifically has some flaws that doesn't make it perfect: the Online features can be frustrating, and a lack of a proper story mode to link all of these characters together makes you feel like something is missing from the bigger picture.

But there is not to argue regarding the quality of it. One of Nintendo and Masahiro Sakurai's greatest achievements.
Impossible to not enjoy and a must play for everyone.

Ultimate is interesting to me, because, despite being an ostensibly more casual experience than Melee, the way a lot of the kits are designed are extremely hostile to anyone who doesn't, like, go to tournaments. But even if you stick it out and get to the point where you can hit a moving target with Fox back-air, you've probably gotten good enough to be frustrated with the set initial dash distance, or how miserable it is to interact with platforms, etc. There is the classic post-melee ceiling on movement mechanics we've come to expect, but there is also a weirdly high floor to the way a lot of the characters play. I actually think this is where, at least from a non-hyper-competitive perspective, the worst changes to how Smash functions on a basic level have come from. The removal of lasting hitboxes being a kind of default, the lowering of the frame windows on weak hits generally, and the outright removal of reverse hitboxes, restrict a lot of the cool skill expression that comes from manipulating the specific placement of attacks, but more importantly, these changes harm a beginner trying to play someone like ZSS for the first time. I guess I just find it really interesting that complexity is being removed, but that has come with the strange consequence of the game being harder to learn in a lot of ways. I don't really have my finger on the pulse of smash as a primarily casual experience, so perhaps this isn't really an issue, or maybe the game naturally just filters people into the few dozens characters that don't really have this issue as strongly, but either way, I think ultimate has really strange and conflicting design priorities. (Just as a disclaimer: a lot of these things have probably been true since Brawl, but Ultimate is the first Smash game since Melee I actually put considerable time into)

There's a few good things to say about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but almost all of them are either in places that ultimately do not matter for a game of its genre, or a holdover from one of it's much better predecessors on the N64 and GameCube.

Some very quesitonable game design and priority choices nullify all of the good aspects. I don't know if you're familiar with Super Mario Bros. Crossover by Exploding Rabbit, it was a novelty game from the early internet where you could break Mario levels in 2 as characters like Mega Man or Bill Rizer, but that's the vibe I get from some of the new characters, where they feel like a direct port from their source material without much care put into severing the unneeded non-diegetic game mechanics. The game bizarrely has around 7 frames of input lag, I've heard this is because of the lighting system, which is kinda weird because the game doesn't even look very pretty compared to the Wii U game. A lot of non-risky moves in this game possess immense power, while simple and quick moves aren't as quick as they should be, the risk-reward balance is completely out of tune.

The roster size is impressive, (even if not necesarilly good from a balancing perspective) but seems to lack a cohesive vision: if it's a celebration of gaming history, why is Banjo there? if it's a celebration of Nintendo, why is Kazuya there? If it's a celebration of the fans, why is Byleth there? What are they going for beyond "we want to sell plastic Amiibos?". In general a lot of the marketing behind this game gives me bad vibes, I'm really put off by the fact that individual Smash characters get more marketing than some entire Nintendo games, Super Mario Wonder didn't get a CGI trailer and that's a "mainline" instalment in Nintendo's biggest IP, Smash gets CGI trailers for every new character. I can't imagine being a developer for a B-list Nintendo title and seeing a single Smash DLC get more hype than the game I worked on.